The route of light

Lumensquad / Pécs Light Painting Workshop: Op-Art Continuum

The Lumensquad team reflects on the legacy of Victor Vasarely through a projection mapped onto the bastion of the Barbican. The central element of the piece is the continuous, playful, self-repeating transformation of colors and forms. The shifting color gradients and the moiré effect evoke the sensation of a flowing stream of light.

The moving images are created using massive analog projectors and rotating light discs. The visual experience is further enhanced by the “Lighthouse” installation, mini stage, and bar operated by the Szabadkikötő team, making the atmosphere even more immersive.

www.lumensquad.org

2 the sun (DK): Barbican's Fire

Suspended within the historic Barbican watchtower in Pécs, Barbican’s Fire ignites a dialogue between medieval stone and contemporary light. Neon-colored strings are tensioned into a complex geometric web, forming a glowing inner core that appears to float within the tower’s massive structure. Illuminated by UV blacklights, the installation radiates an otherworldly intensity, transforming the Barbican into a beacon of color after dark.

The title Barbican’s Fire references both the tower’s historic role as a place of defense and signal, and the luminous energy at its heart today. As air currents animate the strings, subtle movement brings the installation to life, evoking embers, constellations, or a contained flame.

The work invites visitors to pause within the fortified space and experience a moment where past and present converge, where stone, light, and geometry together rekindle the Barbican as a living landmark.

From Friday to Sunday, the venue is open to visitors from 4:00 PM.

glow-art.org
https://www.instagram.com/2thesunart/

NagyMolnar (Krisztián Nagy & Csaba Molnár): Ascension

The artist duo NagyMolnár presents a selection of their latest light sculptures at the House of Civic Communities, offering a glimpse into the visual world of their upcoming large-scale exhibition opening this autumn at the Kiscelli Museum.

The exhibition explores the relationship between light, geometry, and perception through floating forms, reflections, and constantly shifting light structures that guide visitors through the space. The works combine technological precision with the emotional and meditative qualities of light.

The presented pieces include kinetic light sculptures, geometric installations, and spiritually inspired works. Moving through the exhibition, visitors are gradually led from playful visual experiences toward a more contemplative atmosphere, where light becomes not only a spectacle, but an inner experience.

One of the defining characteristics of NagyMolnár’s works is their layered nature — not only in a technical sense, but also on sensory and spiritual levels. Using light as a medium allows the artists to evoke realities beyond the visible world. Light does more than illuminate: it reveals, conceals, filters, and opens new dimensions, creating layers that are both physical and emotional.

For the artists, light is not simply a tool, but a metaphor for understanding, transformation, and elevation. Darkness is not its opposite, but an essential backdrop to this journey. Moving through these layers — physically and mentally alike — becomes a kind of pilgrimage, where visitors pass not only through the artworks, but through their own inner perceptions as well.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

www.nagymolnar.com
www.instagram.com/_nagymolnar_

1024 architecture (FR): Volume

VOLUME is an indoor audio visual sculpture that explores the boundaries between digital abstraction and organic life. Designed as a luminous one-cubic-meter structure, the sculpture is composed of multiple vertical LED planes layered in space. These transparent sheets form a three-dimensional display surface where shifting patterns of light appear, evolve, and dissolve in real time.

Like a living organism, Volume breathes, vibrates, and pulses—its motion driven by custom software that generates continuous variations of form and rhythm. Drawing visual inspiration from medical imaging techniques such as CT scans or ultrasound diagnostics, the installation reveals the cross-sections of an invisible entity moving within its confined space. Viewers witness slices of an amorphous body emerge and vanish, as if decoding the internal anatomy of a digital being.

Volume is more than a sculpture; it is a living canvas that brings together the logics of spatial computing, kinetic art, and bio-inspired aesthetics. By transposing scientific imaging into the field of sensorial experience, the piece invites viewers to question what is alive, what is virtual, and how light itself can occupy space like a body.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

https://www.1024architecture.net
https://www.instagram.com/1024architecture

Light Spray Visual: Irish Frequency

IRISH FOCUS

The Light Spray Visual team creates the visual environment of the venue associated with Irish Focus through atmospheric light painting. The expressive projection is built on strong contrasts, geometric shapes, and mathematical rhythms, while also evoking the mood of the Irish landscape.
The work does not tell specific stories, but rather creates a meditative, floating visual experience through intertwining patterns, light structures, and abstract symbols.

www.lightsprayvisual.com

Supported by the Embassy of Ireland

Porta Analoga Group: Porta Analoga

Can light be eaten? Can sound be seen?

In the age of artificial intelligence, everything that makes us human becomes increasingly important: our senses, our shared experiences, and the unique, unrepeatable moments we live through together.

PORTA ANALOGA is an immersive interdisciplinary space built around the meeting of the senses, where visuality, music, and analog techniques come together to create a living, constantly evolving experience. At the heart of the project lies the human experience of collective presence and creation.

Through the work of the Drukker printmaking collective, site-specific artworks are created for overhead projectors, which visitors can freely interact with and expand in playful ways. In the garden, three additional artists compose large-scale glass slides for PANI theatrical projectors.

The visuals are accompanied by immersive soundscapes throughout the thematic evenings, featuring 12 music producers and DJs, all artists connected to Pécs or studying at, or graduated from, the Electronic Music Department of the University of Pécs.

The museum buildings, the sculptures of Pierre Székely, and the Cathedral Square courtyard all come to life. while perhaps we, too, move a little closer to one another and to the understanding that our existence is irreplaceable.

Aideen Barry (IE): Oblivion / Seachmalltacht / ᖃᐅᔨᒪᔭᐅᔪᓐᓃᖅᑐᑦ

IRISH FOCUS

Oblivion  ᖃᐅᔨᒪᔭᐅᔪᓐᓃᖅᑐᑦ  SEACHMALLTACHT  is a compelling exploration of memory, loss, and the ephemeral nature of existence. Through her innovative use of mixed media and performance, Barry evokes the banned and outlawed music of the Irish Harp and Inuit Throat Singing, alongside the suppressed languages and folklore of colonised peoples.

The work is enriched by a collaborative effort with artists Riit ᕇᑦ , Aisling Lyons, Cathal Murphy, Stephen Shannon, Turlough O’Carolan, and Edward Bunting, whose contributions deepen the dialogue around cultural resilience and the reclamation of silenced histories.

Together, they challenge viewers to confront the cultural erasure imposed by colonialism and invite reflection on how these silenced traditions persist in the shadows of history. Irish and Inuit folklore and motifs from banned stories and song are reconfigured as poisonous digital representations of scourge and resilience, the visuals are plaited with an apocalyptic pop song that starts as a warning but evolves into a EDM exploration of joy as an act of resistance. 

www.instagram.com/aideenbarry

Technical partner: Night Projection & EPSON

Supported by the Embassy of Ireland

Dorottya Kanics & Jutka Vörös: Crystal Garden

Community Light Installation & Workshop

Crystal Garden is an outdoor community light installation composed of folded, crystal-shaped illuminated objects. A special feature of the project is that many of the crystals are created together with festival visitors, allowing the garden to continuously grow and transform throughout the festival.

The crystals evoke the diversity of nature and the hidden wonders found beneath the earth’s surface. At once fragile and timeless, these slowly forming natural structures reveal new faces when touched by light. Their translucent surfaces and geometric forms create a unique meeting point between order and organic growth, while the glowing light within them builds a calm, meditative atmosphere.

In contrast to the festival’s more intense and dynamic light installations, Crystal Garden offers a peaceful space filled with warm light and quiet contemplation. Hundreds of smaller glowing crystals form organic, labyrinth-like pathways that visitors can freely wander through. Rather than creating closed walls, the installation opens soft transitions and walkable spaces that invite both playful exploration and reflection.

Throughout the festival, afternoon and evening workshops welcome visitors to create their own folded crystal. The completed pieces become part of the collective installation during the event, and at the end of the festival participants may take one crystal home as a keepsake.

Created by visual artist Dorottya Kanics and graphic and industrial designer Jutka Vörös.

Supported by: DECOLED Kft.

Viktória Hitka: DREAM

A temporary reality composed in light. 

"We are always running for the thrill of it, thrill of it
Always pushing up the hill, searching for the thrill of it
On and on and on we are calling out, and out again
Never looking down, I'm just in awe of what's in front of me."

/Empire of the Sun/ 

Projection Technology Partner: Night Projection

Sponsor: PÉTÁV Kft.

BENZE: "Hundred Steps" – Guide to Trance

Imagine drifting through a boundless infinity of shifting colors and energies.
With every fleeting moment, you dissolve deeper into a state of perfect calm and a surreal, mind-expanding experience.

The Mosque of Gázi Kászim Pasha on Széchenyi Square (today known as the Downtown Candlemas Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary) earned the name "Hundred Steps" because the original Ottoman mosque, built in the 1540s, measured exactly one hundred steps in both length and width.

The phrase "Hundred Steps" may also refer to a structured 100-day self-hypnosis program designed for habit change and personal development, as well as to a deep relaxation technique based on counting steps.

Projection technology partner: Night Projection & EPSON
Supported by: EPSON

Hybrid Production: Vasarely 4D

At the heart of the project lies the geometric and optical art of Victor Vasarely, reimagined through the tools of contemporary light technology in an immersive new form. The space of the Nádor Gallery transforms into a constantly shifting visual environment where geometric forms, light, and shadow come alive through the movement of the viewer.

Light arriving from different directions creates optical illusions: forms appear to float, distort, or shift, turning every viewpoint into a new visual experience. The installation uses light not simply as illumination, but as an independent medium that actively shapes space.

The project is both a tribute to Vasarely’s legacy and a contemporary reinterpretation of the visual language of Op Art. Within its minimalist yet monumental atmosphere, art, architecture, and technology merge into a unified sensory experience.

Projection Technology Partner and Sponsor: EPSON
Lighting Technology Partner and Sponsor: Harman Professional
Audio Technology Partner and Sponsor: Adamson

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

HARMAN Professional

The Pécs manufacturing site of the world-renowned lighting and audio technology company has been supplying the global market with professional lighting and audio equipment for over a decade – combining continuous innovation with local expertise. 

As a member of the Samsung Group, HARMAN is one of Hungary’s leading manufacturers in the audio and lighting industry. The Pécs plant produces products from globally recognized brands, including Martin, JBL, AKG, and Soundcraft. In 2025, the HARMAN Professional facility in Pécs celebrated its 10th anniversary. Over the past decade, the site has become a key contributor to the company’s global manufacturing and supply chain, where advanced technologies and the region’s high-level expertise together support HARMAN’s international success.

HARMAN Professional plays an active role not only globally but also locally in shaping the future of lighting technology. For several years, the company has been a partner of the Zsolnay Light Festival, which is not only one of Pécs’ most significant cultural events but also an outstanding lighting event at the European level. Professional lighting solutions manufactured at the Pécs facility are integral to the visual identity of the festival, contributing to the city’s ability to welcome visitors each year with unique light installations and visual experiences. In 2026, at several key venues of the anniversary Light Festival – including the Nádor Gallery – creative installations will be realized using HARMAN Professional lighting equipment. HARMAN is proud to support the festival’s creative team and to actively contribute to the event’s success with its technological solutions.

Lighting solutions manufactured in Pécs are present at numerous iconic locations around the world, including the Royal Opera House in London, the Sydney Opera House, the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, as well as onboard the world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas. They also play a significant role at both domestic and international events: beyond illuminating the Pécs TV Tower, they have been featured at major events such as Katy Perry’s performance at the coronation of King Charles III, as well as at international music productions including concerts by The Killers and Huntrix.

The HARMAN Professional facility in Pécs currently employs more than 300 people from the city and surrounding areas. The company places great emphasis on employee well-being: it provides organized transportation to work, offers on-site hot meal options, and delivers continuous training opportunities that support professional development. In 2025, the company received both the “Family-Friendly Workplace” title and the “CSR Hungary” award, further strengthening its commitment to supporting employees.

Gáspár Hajdu: Binarythm

A spatial interactive audiovisual installation exploring the relationship between optical rhythm, repetition, and audiovisual perception through modular analogue displays.

A central 56×56 pixel panel is surrounded by six smaller square-shaped displays, forming interconnected visual and sonic structures. Across the differently sized modules, geometric forms pulse, scale, and transform along rhythmic patterns.

The mechanical and physical operation of the technology makes the fundamental units of digital image-making perceptible. Triggered by the presence of visitors, the image appears as a sequence of clicking, vibrating, modular events, while the panels function as a kind of kinetic audiovisual instrument. 

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

https://www.gasparhajdu.hu

Gábor Palotai: Possible landscapes

A selection of works by the Sweden-based Hungarian visual artist Gábor Palotai presents the multifaceted nature of his artistic practice. Spanning more than four decades, his oeuvre encompasses a wide range of media and recurring motifs.

His experimental interpretations of possible landscapes have resulted in a diverse body of artworks. Crossing the boundaries of genres and often employing mixed media techniques, his works unfold within the expansive aesthetic and visual cultural landscape of our time. What began as a visual exploration of pixels and graphic fragments has evolved into an extensive practice of pattern-making, forming the foundation of his vast private archive of motifs and textures. These various patterns serve as the basis for many of his works.

The digital films and animations presented at the Pécs Gallery as part of a video installation challenge the boundaries of vision, perception, and reality. They function as crossings between physical and virtual space, while their visual systems simultaneously evoke the languages of the Bauhaus and Victor Vasarely.

On view from July 2 to August 23.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Steve Pavlovsky / Liquid Light Lab (US): Liquid Light Show

Steve Pavlovsky’s Liquid Light Lab is a multidimensional light art project rooted in liquid projection, experimental media, and handcrafted organic visuals inspired by the psychedelic light shows of the 1960s. Following the traditions of Wassily Kandinsky, Thomas Wilfred, and the Joshua Light Show, Pavlovsky’s work explores the spiritual and transcendent possibilities of visual experience.

Built around the relationship between analog light and time, Liquid Light Lab functions as a living, breathing visual expression of music, nature, and the human spirit. Using liquids, pigments, and analog projection techniques, the performances create constantly evolving abstract imagery in real time.

Pavlovsky has previously collaborated with members of Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead, and has created custom visual shows for artists including Paolo Nutini, Butthole Surfers, The War on Drugs, Dead Meadow, Primal Scream, and The Horrors.

At the Festival of Lights, Liquid Light Lab will collaborate with the team of Tilos Rádió across four evenings to create an immersive audiovisual experience.

Historically, Liquid Light Lab is connected to the psychedelic light show culture of the 1960s, when collectives such as the Joshua Light Show and Brotherhood of Light accompanied iconic concerts with live visual performances. These experiments used liquids, dyes, and analog technologies to generate continuously transforming abstract imagery synchronized with music.

The roots of this tradition go even deeper, reaching early 20th-century ideas of “visual music,” explored by artists like Kandinsky and Thomas Wilfred, who approached light as an independent artistic medium. Liquid Light Lab carries this tradition into a contemporary context: simultaneously paying tribute to analog methods of the past while reinterpreting them for today.

While much of digital visual culture focuses on precision and control, Liquid Light Lab embraces unpredictability, physical materiality, and processes unfolding in real time. In this way, the project becomes not only an aesthetic practice, but also a cultural bridge between the experimental spirit of the psychedelic era and contemporary media art.

liquidlightlab.com

The installation at Színház Square is part of the USA250 commemorative program.

Glowing Bulbs: Pixelbug

Pixelbug is a digital public sculpture, the totem of the Zsolnay Light Festival, created by Glowing Bulbs. Originally built for the 2017 festival edition, the installation returns to Pécs for this year's jubilee edition to once again tower above visitors and proclaim the universality of light. The minimalist sculpture alters the perspective of Jókai Square during the daytime, but once evening sets in the giant rose chafer bug comes to life and fills its surroundings with light. Although the shape is extremely simplified and far from conventional representations of the bug, with the help of the pixel-controlled LEDs it creates a strong connection to Pécs. The evening light show resembles the shimmer of eosin and turns the static frame dynamic and alive. The nearly five hundred kilogram illuminated beast, built from hundreds of custom parts, could be clearly seen from a passing airplane, but the festival visitors are luckier: they can enjoy the show up close! 

Glowing Bulbs

The collective evolved from millenial Budapest’s underground party culture that mixes visual art, architecture and technical approaches to create their pieces. The have been an active player in the contemporary Hungarian digital visual art scene ever since. The group has always placed great emphasis on experimenting with different forms of non-linear storytelling. In their light installations, video mappings and projected, immersive light environments, they use a wide range of techniques, and their works go beyond the visual elements for their own sake. 

Over the past 28 years, Glowing Bulbs has created numerous light installations, award-winning building projections, panoramic projections, theater and opera sets, live VJ performances, music videos, short films and independent video installations. Their work has been exhibited at festivals, galleries and museums across Europe, North America and the Middle East.

glowingbulbs.com
https://www.facebook.com/glowingbulbs/
https://www.instagram.com/glowingbulbs/

VPM (ES): Vestigi

Vestigi is an immersive audiovisual piece that explores water as a system of memory — a medium capable of retaining rhythms, vibrations, and transformations over time. Through flows of particles, waves, dynamic patterns, and organic forms in constant evolution, the work creates a living landscape where each state emerges from the one before it, shaping a continuous visual narrative built on accumulation, change, and the persistence of movement. Light becomes a language of revelation, making visible the relationships between water, energy, and matter, while sound extends this process as a sensitive echo of the flow itself. Together, these elements create an experience where nothing truly disappears, but instead transforms, lingers, and leaves a trace.

The installation will be open to visitors on July 3, 4, and 5 from 12:00 PM onwards.

Supported by: ÁRKÁD Pécs Shopping Center

Those Guys Lighting (LV): Divine Geometry

Divine Geometry explores the complexity and harmony of the natural world, inviting viewers to sense the hidden patterns that shape existence. Its luminous central ring symbolizes life, nature, and the mathematical beauty that connects all living things.

The installation consists of 24 lasers arranged in a perfect ring, creating an intense, psychedelic visual experience. At the heart of the experience is a specially composed 30-minute audio track, developed in collaboration with award-winning Latvian sound engineer Pēteris Pāss. This original soundtrack deepens the journey, blending with the shifting laser fields to immerse viewers in a meditative state.

Together, the light, sound, and symbolic geometry merge into a singular transformative space. Divine Geometry  connects the personal with the universal, inviting each of us to step into a portal of reflection, wonder, and cosmic resonance.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

The installation can be visited on July 3, 4, and 5 from 4:00 PM onwards.

Hadihopsasa x Daniel Baer (DE): Bodhira

Bodhira is an interactive kinetic light installation through which we explore the delicate relationship between complex systems and human intervention.

At its core, a circular structure with 22 movable arms opens and closes in an organic motion reminiscent of a blooming flower. With reflective surfaces, more than 1,700 individually controllable LEDs, and an immersive spherical soundscape, the work creates shifting moments between harmony, disruption, and chaos.

Through touch interaction, visitors alter rhythms, light patterns, and sound layers in real time, revealing how even the smallest gestures can affect complex responsive systems. With Bodhira, we seek to open a space for reflection on agency, harmony, and coexistence. 

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

The installation can be visited on July 3, 4, and 5 from 4:00 PM onwards.

Supported by: Lenau Ház Pécs 

FényHangÁr: Vasarely remake

The interactive installation reinterprets the Op Art universe of Victor Vasarely through contemporary technology. Using special controller sculptures, visitors can influence the colors, shapes, and movements of the projections cast onto the treetops of the park, becoming active participants in the artwork itself.

The two interactive controllers are inspired by iconic Vasarely works: one references a public sculpture in Budapest, while the other draws from his famous zebra motif. Touch interactions not only transform the projected Op Art animations, but also trigger colorful light responses within the sculptures themselves.

Together, the moving and static visual elements projected onto the trees transform the park into a playful environment of light, where nature, technology, and Vasarely’s optical universe merge.

About the collaboration

Balokány Park, its lake, and former bath complex are located between the Kodály Centre and the Zsolnay Quarter.

The first beach bath beside Lake Balokány was built in 1853 and underwent its largest renovation in 1933. The highly popular bathing complex experienced its golden age during the 1960s and 1970s, before closing in the early 1980s.

In 2011, a civic initiative was launched to revitalize Balokány Park and develop it into a family- and community-oriented public space. The project has achieved numerous successes in recent years, including the renovation of the lakeside stage, the construction of a children’s playground, and most recently the reopening of the legendary Pepita Café with a nostalgic garden terrace.

The Festival of Lights joins this initiative together with the teams of FényHangÁr and Aquaprofit Zrt., bringing new light to the ivy-covered façade of the historic Balokány Bath building during the festival nights.

Supported by: Aquaprofit Zrt.
Cooperating partner: Balokány-ligetért Egyesület

ZSFF Originals: Enhanced Light Forest

Beyond the stations of the Path of Light, this year the entire Zsolnay Quarter becomes part of a unique nighttime atmosphere. Tree canopies, pathways, and hidden spaces are filled with subtle light, creating a dreamlike environment for all-night exploration.

As visitors wander between the stations, the Quarter gradually transforms into a floating, mysterious world of light, where nature, architecture, and illumination merge into a unified immersive experience.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

LIGHT ART CAMP
PTE MK & MOME MD & EKKE MDI
Video Mapping Workshop

Following last year’s highly successful video mapping project created during a multi-day workshop by students of the Media Design program at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, the workshop once again becomes a highlighted project of the festival’s Light Art Camp.

Expanded this year with students from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pécs and the Media and Design Institute of Eszterházy Károly Catholic University in Eger, participants from all three universities will collaborate in a multi-day creative workshop ahead of the festival to produce brand-new animations for the façade of the Institute of Music.

The 15-member team will once again create their site-specific works around a specially composed sound collage.

WORKSHOP ARTISTS:

University of Pécs, Faculty of Arts
Dorka Balogh
Martin Gaál
Lilianna Hemm
Barbara Szilágyi
Lili Ujváry
Virág Kappel

Károly Eszterházy University, Institute of Media and Design – Eger
Bence Erdős
Pálos Regő Ferenczy
Péter Márk Morvay
Olívia Sáfrány

MOME Media Design Department – Budapest
Bökény Balogh
Imola Barta
Emese Márton
Matyi Szabó
Levente Váry

Workshop leader: Tamás Zádor / Kiégő Izzók
Composers: Kinga Kovács (aka dj Sanyi) and Ádám Salman

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

LIGHT ART CAMP
Tünde Bory
Zsolnay Zoo

Zsolnay Zoo is a unique visual journey where family heritage meets contemporary graphic art. Tünde Bory, a graduating graphic design student at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pécs, draws inspiration from the walls of her childhood home:

“Zsolnay Zoo is the meeting point of personal memory and contemporary graphic vision. The project is inspired by my mother’s Zsolnay collection, where since childhood I have admired the many porcelain animal figures. This intimate, family ‘zoo’ merges with my own experience of passing through the Zsolnay Quarter every day during my five years as a student at the Faculty of Arts.

During the project, the Op Art style of Victor Vasarely — especially his iconic zebras — became an important point of reference. My goal was not to reproduce the porcelain forms exactly, but to reinterpret the animals’ character and movement as a vibrant visual play that presents tradition through a contemporary prism of light.”

Projection technology partner: Night Projection

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Juan Fuentes (ES): Kinetic perspective

Inspired by the Optical Art illusions of the 1960s, Kinetic Perspective takes a simple piece as its starting point: an ever-spinning circle moving outwards and its illusory effect. In this way, the artist creates an abstract, immersive geometric shape, playing with the perspective of visitors by giving the impression of movement.

A row of eighteen illusions, each composed of two circles spinning in sync, gives the impression of a vanishing point at the eye level of visitors. Invited to actively participate and observe, the audience must move around to uncover the patterns, glimmers and distortion, in which a hidden geometry will be revealed.

https://www.juanfuentestudio.com
https://www.instagram.com/juanfuentestudio 

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Playmodes (ES): Espills

"Espills" is a solid light dynamic sculpture. Built using laser beams, laser scanners and robotic mirrors, it is inspired by crystalline formations. A set of geometric figures that float in the air and which suggest, in an abstract way, the transmutation of matter from chaos to order. Dust is becoming crystal, being eroded and becoming sand again. Each visual representation integrates its own sound design through sonification algorithms that transform light into music, completing this alchemical landscape.

https://www.playmodes.com

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Due to the strong light and sound effects, these events are not recommended to visitors who are sensitive to it!

LIGHT ART CAMP
EKKE Media & Design Institute
Common frequency

In the spaces of the Kemence Gallery, students and lecturers from the Media and Design Institute of Eszterházy Károly Catholic University of Eger present their audiovisual works together. Emerging from the meeting of different generations and artistic perspectives, the exhibited pieces explore the relationship between light, moving image, space, and perception.

Through a process of experimentation, sound transforms into image while visuals generate sound — a playful interaction of elements, sensory experiences, and site-specific possibilities. The exhibition is a reflection of a shared creative frequency between teachers and students: a convergence of resonances, overlaps, and media thinking together in dialogue.

The works of the Eger-based students will also appear beyond the gallery walls at various locations throughout the festival. Lívia Váli and Bence Erdős will present collaborative works together with students from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pécs in rarely visited spaces of the Quarter, while works by Lívia Váli and Dóra Mihók will remain on view until the end of summer as part of the group exhibition at the m21 Gallery.

Artists:
Bence Erdős
Regő Pálos Ferenczy
Hanna Lévai
Dóra Mihók
Péter Márk Morvay
Lívia Váli
Rudolf Szilágyi
Olívia Sáfrány

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required. 

Ágoston Nagy: L1NK

L1NK is an audiovisual installation exploring the relationship between space, memory, and digital connectivity. The work consists of four LED matrices and an accompanying sound system, where algorithmically controlled lights, movements, and sounds generate constantly evolving patterns.

The reactive system of pixels and sound creates an abstract, network-like environment in which memory and information exist not as static forms, but as living, continuously transforming structures. The installation reflects on today’s digital reality — a world where connections, data, and associations often become more important than traditional forms of spatial orientation.

The LED panels and sound modules operate as a shared system, responding to, amplifying, or counterbalancing each other’s movements and rhythms. The resulting audiovisual space evokes technological networks, artificial intelligence, and organic self-organizing processes at the same time.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

https://entangled.tools
https://www.instagram.com/0xstc
https://x.com/_stc
https://bsky.app/profile/entangled.tools

Grafoscope: Planetary garden

The black-and-white and neon-lit botanical surfaces simultaneously evoke futuristic landscape architecture and psychedelic visual culture.

Planetary Garden is an installation where nature and optical geometry merge into a single surreal landscape.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Perceptual Spaces – Hommage à Vasarely by Light
Group exhibition by the Lighthouse Egyesület and guest artists

The exhibition Perceptual Spaces explores the mechanisms and uncertainties of perception through the tools of light-based, digital, and geometric contemporary art. The presented works create visual situations in which space appears not as a fixed structure, but as a phenomenon continuously shaped by gaze, movement, and sensory experience.

The exhibition reinterprets the legacy of geometric abstraction within a contemporary technological context. Through light, repetition, algorithmic systems, and optical shifts, it raises questions about how we perceive reality and what role the viewer plays in the creation of the image itself. Perceptual Spaces approaches vision not as passive reception, but as an active, bodily, and time-based experience.

Exhibiting Artists:

Gáspár Battha ● László Csízy ● Zsolt Gyenes ● Dr. Réka Harsányi ● Mátyás Kálmán(mao) ● Kati Katona ● Gábor Kitzinger ● Ivó Kovács ● Áron Kútvölgyi-Szabó ● Nagy Krisztián and Csaba Molnár (NagyMolnár) ● Marcell Menyhárt ● Dóra Mihók & Lívia Váli ● László Papp Pala ● Csilla Szilágyi & László Papp Pala & Gergely Mindák 

Curators:
Valéria Fekete ● Krisztina Heckler ● Péter Pusker

Since 2020 the Lighthouse Egyesület has brought together artists and professionals exploring the cultural and spiritual dimensions of light. Its mission is to establish Hungary as an international center of light culture by preserving scientific and artistic heritage while fostering innovation and collaboration in the fields of contemporary art and technology.

Opening Hours from July 2-5 during the Zsolnay Light Festival: 11:00 a.m.-20:00 p.m. and 21:30 p.m.-1:00 a.m.; Sunday: 11:00 a.m.-20:00 p.m. and 21:30 p.m.-12:00 a.m.
Opening Hours starting July 8, 2026: Wednesday–Sunday: 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

EPSON is the technical sponsor of the exhibition.

Marc Vilanova (ES): Cascade

Waterfalls emit infrasonic frequencies vital for the navigation of certain birds, which use them as a compass during their migrations. Recently, noise pollution from industrialization has threatened this journey.

Cascade attempts to reproduce the infrasonic recordings of various waterfalls using small speakers incapable of emitting such low frequencies. However, their vibrations activate an optical fiber through which the sound "falls", creating a curtain of light that visualizes the sound waves, offering an alternative form of listening.

This challenges human auditory and perceptual capabilities, decentering our position as "the measure of all things". Such vibration can be seen, felt, and touched with the skin, providing a multisensory experience that emphasizes interspecies connections through "feeling with" others and the body.

The fibers of Cascade illuminate the viewer’s position, reminding us of the critical importance of preserving the often unseen elements of nature.

https://marcvilanova.com
https://www.instagram.com/marcvilanova.studio

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Leticia RMS & Carol Santana & Victor Valentim & VIGAS (BR): Brazilian Fulldome Showcase

The Zsolnay Light Festival receives a special selection of Brazilian works in fulldome format, held in collaboration with the PULSAR Fulldome Festival and Festa das Luzes.

The screening features four artists who work with moving image, sound, light and immersive environments, occupying the dome as a space of perception, displacement and audiovisual experience.

The curatorship is signed by VIGAS, a Brazilian artist whose research traverses light installations, temporary architectures, audiovisual systems and relations between art, science and nature.

Collaboration is born from the desire to bring contexts closer together and create new routes of circulation for immersive works produced in Brazil, opening space for a meeting between different scenes, sensitivities and ways of experiencing light.

With this partnership the Zsolnay Light Festival, the PULSAR and Festa das Luzes strengthen an international network dedicated to the art of light, digital creation and the expanded possibilities of the fulldome.

Partners:
PULSAR Fulldome Festival
Festa das Luzes de Joinville

Detailed program:

Leticia RMS: Sagrado Selvagem

Sagrado Selvagem is a journey through imagined landscapes, moving between nature, dreams, and the cosmos. The work draws from the force of the natural world to create a sensory and contemplative experience, where the wild appears as a place of mystery, beauty, and transformation. 

Carol Santana: Nixi Pãe

Inspired by ancestral knowledge and lived experiences with sacred Indigenous medicines, the work proposes a sensitive reading of the relationship between matter and spirit, where the visible and the invisible intertwine as dimensions of a single existence. The images emerge as a translation of inner states, visions, and perceptions that move through the body and expand consciousness.

Nixi Pae is the name given by the Huni Kuin Indigenous people of Acre to the sacred drink popular known as Ayahuasca, symbol of spirituality and cure.

The work incorporates footage captured in Huni Kuin territory in Amazônia, creating a composition that tensions reality, perception, memory and presence. The work invites the viewer to traverse layers of existence and to recognize themselves as part of an interconnected whole. 

Victor Valentim: 3Lôas

3Lôas is a short fulldome film paying homage to the 80th anniversary of Naná Vasconcelos, the late Brazilian percussionist whose work profoundly reshaped Afro-Brazilian percussion and contemporary experimental music. Through immersive image, rhythm, spatial sound, and dome-based composition, the film evokes Naná’s poetic and musical universe as a field of memory, resonance, and transformation. More than a tribute, the work offers a sensorial encounter with the depth of his legacy and with the expressive force of Afro-Brazilian musical culture. 

VIGAS: Photosphere

"Photosphere" is a journey through the concept that permeates our main star, integrating astrophysical and biological elements into a sensorial audiovisual experience. Generative videos represent the dynamic solar photosphere, using real elements and data collected from the universe to create vibrant patterns and ephemeral colors. Synchronized with an original soundtrack based on real sounds captured from space, the work establishes a unique connection between light and sound, transmitting the intense variation of solar energy. The public is invited to explore and immerse themselves in a journey that captures the essence of the Sun as a source of life and its profound influence on the Earth and its creatures. "Photosphere" is a sensorial celebration that invites the public to contemplate the wealth of meanings that the Sun offers, from its physical essence to its vital impact on life on Earth. 

https://www.instagram.com/festadasluzesoficial
https://leticiarms.com
https://carolsantanavj.com
https://victorvalentim.com
https://studiovigas.com

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

LIGHT ART CAMP
MOME Media and Design
Star terrace

At one of the most unique spots in the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter, a familiar space reveals a new face: as night falls, the area transforms into a playful world woven from light. Shapes that seem ordinary by day take on a different character, becoming an environment where vision and perception are constantly shifting, always offering something new to discover.

The space is brought to life by second-year Media Design BA students from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, who experiment with light and digital visuality. They simultaneously conceal and highlight details, adding new layers to perception. Surfaces, patterns, and forms truly come alive in the dark, subtly pushing the boundaries of reality.

The playground becomes a world where light, interaction, and imagination meet — a place where everyone becomes a participant.

Design Students:
Borbála Bács
Levente Bökény Balogh
Borbála Barát
Imola Barta
Bence Bodoky
Laura Liza Fehérvári
Sára Fekete
Zsolna Gál
Hanna Médea Holics
Antónia Kelemen
Liza Móna Madarász
Emese Márton
Mara Matolcsi
András Mocsár
Mátyás Szabó
Levente Váry
Roland Vass

Instructor:
Antal Bodóczky

Program Lead:
Attila Viktor Pálfalusi

Project Managers:
Brigitta Tóth
Júlia Dóra Molnár

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

https://mome.hu/hu/kepzesek/media-design-ba

Rudolf Kenyeres & Ákos Kolozsvári: Corridor

An interactive installation where images and sound are generated in real time through hand movements. Algorithmically repeating and subtly shrinking forms create the illusion of an endless, pulsating corridor.

Visitors are not merely observers, but active participants shaping the space itself: visual and auditory layers merge into a single immersive experience.

The installation references Victor Vasarely’s Line Period series, transforming its static composition into a living, continuously evolving system. Through a feedback loop, a simple visual structure unfolds into infinite variations shaped by the movements of the audience.

https://www.behance.net/ruidruid
https://www.instagram.com/ruidruid

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

Attila Márk Kőrös: Flux 

Flux is an audiovisual light installation exploring cosmological phenomena through an abstract spatial experience. The conceptual starting point of the work is the hypothesis of the white hole — a theoretical model derived from general relativity and understood as the time-reversed counterpart of a black hole. While a black hole absorbs matter and light, a white hole can only emit them: releasing energy, matter, and radiation outward.

Within the installation, the circular projection surface appears not as an object, but as an event-like spatial phenomenon. The rear-projected generative audiovisual content does not construct narrative imagery, but instead creates the sensation of continuous emission. Light does not concentrate or disappear; it behaves as an outward-moving dynamic process, as if space itself were emerging from the surface.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

https://www.instagram.com/korostuncsi

Koros Design Studio: Under the Garden 

What pops into your mind when we say flower garden? Millions of colors and shades. Sweet scents of heavenly joy. Tranquility and the silence of nature with bees buzzing around. Childhood. Escaping the everyday.

This installation wants to evoke exactly these feelings and memories. It puts you in a place that seems forgotten but not far away. Maybe your grandma’s back yard, or a meadow where you once felt content.

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.

https://korosdesign.com

LIGHT ART CAMP
PTE MK Light Art Course students
Discover it!

Students of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pécs explored the boundaries of digital art this spring as part of a light art course: how light can transform space, alter perception, or make visible what usually remains hidden in everyday life.

The works created during the course are now appearing in the lesser-known courtyards and corners of the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter. Hidden away in secluded spaces, tucked between walls, and emerging unexpectedly from shadowy corners, they create their own unique atmospheres. These installations do more than simply occupy the locations — they subtly reinterpret the function and mood of the spaces themselves.

Artists:
Igor Olivér Artner 
Bence Barna 
Cristiano Sgroi 
Viktória Horváth 
Márton Kelemen 
Alíz Kincses 
Máté Komlósi 
Máté Varga-Vallyon 
Bálint Nagy 
Márton Tamás Székely 
Barbi Szilágyi 
Ákos Varró 
Péter Váry 
Gábor Velki 

Project coordinator: Márton Kelemen 

FESTIVAL MAX wristband required.